“All political lives”, said Enoch Powell, the British statesman, “unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and human affairs”.
Although the UK’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, won a thumping majority for his governing Conservative Party in the general election on Dec 12, 2019, his political career is now over, less than three years later. Despite having won 365 parliamentary seats to the Labor Party’s 202, with 13,966,454 popular votes, or 43.6% of the total, his own members of parliament, through the 1922 Committee, which represents them, have forced him out.
Although Johnson had wanted to remain in office until the 2030s, his hopes have turned to dust, just as they did for many of his predecessors. Whereas, for example, Margaret Thatcher was toppled by the 1922 Committee in 1990 because of her antipathy toward the EU, despite having won three successive general elections, the same fate was also inflicted on Theresa May in 2019, when she failed, after the Brexit vote of 2016, to deliver on her mantra of “Leave means leave”. While David Cameron resigned in despair in 2016, after the country rejected his pleas to vote to stay in the European Union, John Major was ignominiously rejected by the electorate in 1997, after presiding over probably the most shambolic government since WWII, riven by divisions over Europe.
Indeed, of the 22 Conservative leaders from Sir Robert Peel in the 1840s to Johnson, only two have stood down on their own terms. One was Lord Salisbury, in 1902, and the other was Stanley Baldwin, in 1937. All the others have been forced out by their own party, or by the voters, or by ill-health. The Conservative Party regards itself as “the natural party of government”, and it has never had any qualms over dumping leaders it concluded who could no longer win elections, and this probably explains its longevity.
The Conservative Party (also known as “the Tories”), was founded, in its current form, by Sir Robert Peel in 1834, and is the oldest political party in the UK, and probably the world. However, its origins can be traced back to earlier times, to the royalists who supported King Charles I in the English Civil War (1642-51), and to the “Tory group” that emerged in the late 17th century and held power during the last years of the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14). After being excluded from office for many years, “the Tories” came into their own between 1770 and 1830, when their governments tried to prevent the American colonies gaining independence, opposed the revolutionary movements sweeping across Europe, and led the war against France’s Napoleon Bonaparte, securing his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
The Conservative Party has been described as “a brutal vote machine”, and its ruthlessness is legendary. At the same time, it knows how to keep ahead of the game, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to get the keys to No 10 Downing Street, even if it means placing its fortunes in the hands of outsiders. Whereas it elected Benjamin Disraeli, whose background was Jewish, as its leader in 1868, it elected Edward Heath as its first leader with working-class antecedents in 1965, and Margaret Thatcher as its first female leader in 1975.
If the latest opinion polls are anything to go by, Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose family came from India, is set fair to become the party’s first Asian leader. If so, there is no reason to suppose that, like the earlier outsiders, he will not also provide the electoral success the party craves. Whereas its traditional voters, invariably loyal, will fall into line behind him, the 4.4 million Asian or Asian British people, accounting for some 6.9% of the population, will be impressed by his success story, even if they are not traditionally supporters of the Conservative Party.
In his own way, Boris Johnson, who was born in New York City, is also an outsider. Although he has a traditional background, having been educated at Eton College and Oxford University, he has always been a maverick, playing by his own rules. Although the Conservative Party was prepared to accept him, warts and all, so long as he could maintain unity and win elections, the tide turned once his faults became the dominant narrative. After a series of scandals, some involving Downing Street parties during the COVID-19 lockdown, and others involving sexual misconduct by an ever-increasing number of his members of parliament, one of them a government minister, several safe Conservative seats were lost in parliamentary by-elections, and the 1922 Committee, sensing electoral disaster, took matters into its own hands.
Although Johnson has only been Prime Minister for about three years, his legacy is huge. He “got Brexit done”, and finally extricated the UK from the European Union, as its people wanted. He restored the primacy of its parliament, its courts and its sovereign, for which future generations will be forever grateful. He also oversaw a highly successful COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the first such in Europe, and the British people are once again living normal lives.
However, despite all the visionary talk of “Global Britain”, Johnson failed to seize the opportunities that Brexit had opened up for the UK. Instead of developing trading and other ties with China, which was always the aspiration of his predecessors, David Cameron and Theresa May, he tamely followed the US in its policy of reckless confrontation. Although he called himself a “fervent Sinophile”, he allowed the UK to become a US patsy, even when this damaged its national interest and that of its neighbors.
Whereas, for example, in January 2020, Johnson agreed to give Huawei a 35% stake in the UK’s 5G telecoms network, he performed a volte face barely six months later, after the then furious US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, demanded he change tack. When France was knifed in the back by Australia over a submarine deal in 2021, Johnson acquiesced, to French fury, even claiming that the US-led AUKUS alliance, that did not want French submarines, was not just another means of targeting China.
Once an insurrection broke out in Hong Kong in 2019, designed to wreck the city’s “one country, two systems” policy and destabilize China, he failed to stand with the city, despite his country’s historic links. Worse, he even backed a series of hostile measures adopted by the US-dominated Five Eyes partnership to harm Hong Kong and its officials, and then allowed criminal fugitives from the city, some wanted for crimes of violence, to claim safe haven in the UK.
Quite clearly, Johnson has lost the confidence of his party and his electorate, and it is right for him to go. His faults, borne largely of hubris, have been his undoing. Having, moreover, successfully delivered on Brexit, he failed to capitalize on its benefits, which has been self-defeating.
Whereas his predecessor, David Cameron, spoke presciently in 2015 of how trade and investment between Britain and China could benefit further from a “golden era” in their bilateral relations, Johnson failed to follow through, despite being in a position to do so. Although Cameron was prepared to risk US ire by signing up as a founding member of China’s new Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015, Johnson repeatedly backpedaled, afraid of upsetting the White House, and British interests have suffered accordingly.
Although Johnson’s successor is likely to be equally myopic, hope springs eternal. A candidate of vision may yet emerge, who realizes that Brexit is about more than kowtowing to the US and antagonizing Beijing.Whoever succeeds him must not be afraid of standing up for British interests, of improving relations with China, and of taking full advantage of all that is on offer in the Far East. After all, it is exactly 50 years since diplomatic ties were established between London and Beijing, and Britain’s incoming Prime Minister should now focus on shared interests by recalibrating a relationship from which everybody stands to benefit.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.